Learning to Act, but Hungry for Roles to Practice

BOSTON — The playwright Kirsten Greenidge was in high demand. Over in the South End, her Obie-winning drama, “Milk Like Sugar,” was in previews at the Huntington Theater Company. A couple of miles west, at Boston University, her new play, “Baltimore,” was edging toward opening. In both places, there was work she needed to do.

On that Saturday afternoon in January, though, she kept her attention on “Baltimore.” Bundled against the chill of a drafty rehearsal room overlooking Commonwealth Avenue, she listened closely as actors spoke new lines she’d given them only the night before.

Like the professional cast of “Milk Like Sugar,” the “Baltimore” cast was made up mostly of young women. But these actresses were undergraduates in B.U.’s College of Fine Arts — and the skills they would gain from working on this production, Ms. Greenidge said, would serve them well when they become professionals.

Theater is “our craft, it’s our passion, but it’s also a job,” she said in an interview after rehearsal. “You need to learn how to do your job well, and you can’t do that without practice.”

Giving more such practice to female undergraduates is a major objective of the program that commissioned “Baltimore” and is rolling it out in productions at several universities this academic year. The Big Ten New Play Initiative — yes, schools better known for football or basketball are behind it — has begun seeding the canon with a fresh crop of works by women.

Naomi Iizuka, Rebecca Gilman and Madeleine George are the other playwrights tapped so far for the project, which is intended in part to address one of American theater’s most pressing concerns: the need to put more plays by women onstage. But the initiative goes a significant step further. Each script is bound by just one rule, said Alan MacVey, who oversees the $10,000 commissions: It must include at least six substantial roles for young women.

Ms. Iizuka’s “Good Kids” — the program’s first play, which had its first productions during the 2014-15 academic year — has eight parts for women, four for men. The second play to come to fruition, “Baltimore” — which runs through Feb. 28 at B.U., in a coproduction with the professional New Repertory Theater — has six parts for women, three for men.

Such abundance is rare, and not just because today’s playwrights tend to keep casts small, the opposite of what schools often need, in hopes of being professionally produced. The gender ratio of casts, classical or contemporary, is skewed, said Mr. MacVey, chair of the Theater Arts Department at the University of Iowa.

He cited “As You Like It” as an example: “That’s got four roles for women. But it’s got 15 roles for men.”

Mr. MacVey credited his wife, Carol, who teaches acting at the University of Iowa, as the catalyst for the initiative. She pointed out to him the paucity of plays with multiple strong parts for women, who often outnumber men in undergraduate acting programs.

Elaine Vaan Hogue, the director of “Baltimore” at B.U., where she is head of the theater arts program, said the gender imbalance in sizable roles is “a huge obstacle” to giving female acting students an education as good as what a man often receives.

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The playwright Kirsten Greenidge, whose “Baltimore” is a beneficiary of the Big Ten New Play Initiative.CreditKayana Szymczak for The New York Times

“And we do a lot of cross-gender casting,” she added.

Gregg Henry, the artistic director of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and a professed fan of the Big Ten initiative, said the issue confronting female students is the same one that minority actors face in their training.

“There’s an ethical question here,” he said. “If you accept the students, then it is your obligation to make sure that they are challenged with every opportunity to step foot on the stage.”

The Big Ten plays unveiled so far aim to do that, and to address issues relevant to young people. Ms. Iizuka’s “Good Kids” — which has high school, college and professional productions coming up — is about a sexual assault by high school football players in a football-loving town. “Baltimore” is a drama about a racially provocative incident on a college campus.

Big Ten schools get dibs on performance rights for each play’s first year, after which anyone can apply to produce it. B.U. was an exception with “Baltimore” because Ms. Greenidge is an assistant professor there.

Jade’ Davis, a 21-year-old senior at B.U., said her most powerful role before “Baltimore” was as a man: Shakespeare’s Hotspur, in “Henry IV, Part I.” In Ms. Greenidge’s play, she said, she gets the unusual chance to portray someone similar to herself: a young black woman — who, like the other female characters, has three dimensions.

“They’re not just the wife,” she said. “They’re not the widow. They’re not the damsel in distress. ”

Desiré Hinkson, a 19-year-old B.U. sophomore, called her role in “Baltimore” the most complex she had ever played. But she said a continuing discussion for her and her female friends was the fact of acting opportunities that don’t come, and how to reconcile that with belief in their own talent.

“I just see these beautiful, amazing roles that these men get to do, and I wish more women had the opportunity,” she said. “If someone doesn’t get the chance, then how are they going to be able to prove themselves, and how will people actually know?”

To Ms. Greenidge, whose play is at the University of Maryland through March 5, supplying those roles for women is partly a matter of allowing a greater variety of people a chance to work, and to show what they can do.

“Sometimes in our field we like to tell ourselves that there isn’t enough room at the table for everybody. And there is,” she said — although someone might have to shove over to make space. “The people who are already sitting are happy there, and their elbows are taking up a lot of room.”

Up next from the Big Ten will be Ms. Gilman’s “Twilight Bowl,” followed by Ms. George’s “Dog Stars.” A fifth commission is in the works. After that, Mr. MacVey said, the group will re-evaluate the initiative and see whether to continue it.

Already, Ms. Iizuka said, the program has “planted a flag in the sand,” one she hopes other institutions embrace as a challenge.

“They said, ‘Look, this is what we’re doing,’” she said. “And I think on some level, the unspoken question is, ‘Now what are you going to do?’”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section AR, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Leveling the Field, Onstage and Off. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe